Guiding Architects, tour: El Ensanche, the Expansion of Madrid (Fig. 1)

Guiding Architects, tour: El Ensanche, the Expansion of Madrid (Fig. 2)

Guiding Architects, tour: El Ensanche, the Expansion of Madrid (Fig. 3)

Guiding Architects, tour: El Ensanche, the Expansion of Madrid (Fig. 4)

Guiding Architects, tour: El Ensanche, the Expansion of Madrid (Fig. 5)

Guiding Architects, tour: El Ensanche, the Expansion of Madrid (Fig. 6)

Tour in Madrid:
El Ensanche, the Expansion of Madrid

The plan for the expansion of Madrid from 1862, known as the Castro Plan, encountered numerous formal obstacles during its implementation: The ownership structure of the land, together with restrictive building regulations, meant that the planned expansion of the city could only develop very slowly: in contrast to the urban expansions of the 19th century as we know them from other European cities, Madrid's Ensanche, planned in the 19th century, was not completed until the late 1970s. As a result, the Ensanche encompasses 120 years of Madrid's architectural history, including some of the most important examples of architecture from the second half of the 20th century.

The architectural tour of Madrid's Ensanche includes a visit to a courtyard that was built exactly as planned by Carlos María de Castro and of some of the most emblematic buildings of Madrid's modern architecture from the 1960s to the 1990s.